Just as every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, every telecommunications network begins with a single link. Each link connects two telecommunications network elements, from individual port to individual port, through a specific transmission medium, such as an electrical cable, an optical fiber, a radio frequency (RF) channel, or other transmission medium. Each network element may be linked to one or more other network elements through a plurality of ports, each of which may include an electrical, optical, or RF interface. In order to properly allocate, or “provision”, network resources and to react appropriately to alarm conditions, one must have an accurate “map” of the network, its component links, and their interconnection. Unfortunately, the link information is difficult to obtain, changes all too frequently (through the addition or deletion of ports, for example), and is subject to error in its discovery. That is, conventional telecommunications networks typically rely upon technicians to input link information, port-to-port connectivity information, whenever a network element is connected to another network element (from one port to another), whenever a network element, or a port on the network element, is initiated, or whenever the port-to-port connectivity of the network is modified in any other way. Not only is the manual entry of such link information time consuming, the tedium involved with such an enterprise very often elicits mistakes from the operating technician.
To properly manage a telecommunications network, a telecommunications network management system typically must be able to identify each link within the system. That is, the network management system typically accumulates the point-to-point connectivity information between the various ports within the system to form a network map. The network map portrays the “cabling”, whether optical, electrical, or otherwise, between all the ports within all network elements within the system. Such networks typically include a very large number of network elements, an even larger number of ports, and, as noted above, in conventional telecommunications networks, each of the links is identified manually. The process of identifying each of the network elements could be a daunting task. That is, due to the tedium involved, and the consequent propensity for errors, manually identifying the port-to-port cabling, or link identification, or all the links connecting all the network elements entails such a great deal of effort as to make it practically impossible. Not only must the link identification information be provided to a network manager and to each of the network elements at the time of a system's initiation, with the addition or deletion of a network element, or a port associated therewith, the link identification information within each element in the network, and/or within a network manager, must also be manually updated. Such an approach is not only error-prone, but time consuming and, consequently, expensive. Since it is impracticable for technicians to input and provision the cabling in this manner, a network manager cannot not ascertain the identification and create a map of connectivity between all the ports within the network manager's domain.
A network management system that automatically determines the connectivity path for each link under its purview would therefore be highly desirable.